We've been thinking of creating posters advertising our boating guides. These would be placed in marina bookstores and shops that our customers are likely to visit.

Each poster would also display a unique discount code. Whenever the code was used to buy one of our guides the buyer would receive a discount and the retailer to whom that code was assigned would receive a share of the sale price.

I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this and how it worked for them. I'd be most grateful for your time and trouble.

We are finally getting ready to promote our guides this way, but we have heard concerns.

The main one seems to be that retailers can't be sure that we are paying them for their sales. I know I can count sales in the transaction log, but I don't think I can give every retailer who signs up our password to check out the sales logs.

We could sign retailers up as affiliates, but wonder if there is another way that we can prove sales.

Unfortunately, we have no way to notify a third party when their discount code is used to place an order.

An affiliate program is probably the way to go for that, and for buyer simplicity you could run each retailer's affiliate link URL through a link-shortener and put that shortened link on their poster as the only way to reach your site to place an order.

You could use your own sign-up link to register an E-junkie account on their behalf that's joined to your program, using an email address deliverable to you initially, then obtain their affiliate Hop Link URL and run that through the shortener, then change their login email to turn the account over to them. Repeat as needed for each other retailer/affiliate.

So someone looks at our website, maybe following an affiliate link from somewhere else, but not bought a guide. Then soon after they follow another affiliate link from a retailer. (Maybe a QR code on the poster!) Does the last affiliate link or the first get precedence.

I like your link idea, but they would have to both follow the affiliate link and use a code, right? I other words, there is no way to give someone a discount when they follow an affiliate link to the site that people who arrive at the site other ways don't get?

The last affiliate referral would get tracked for the sale. We have no way to both track an affiliate referral and also apply a discount at the same time, so buyers would need to follow the affiliate link and then enter the discount code in their cart before checkout.